So I just realized TS2 has no story progression. Looks like I'm doing everything myself then. What ways do you find the most effective to rotate your game play without getting bored or annoyed?
I play each of my families for roughly three days (usually Friday-Tuesday/Tuesday-Friday). I don't play the premades.
I usually have each family do something unique - like one family is a bunch of evil witches/warlocks, the other one own a business.. etc and so on.
There are 2 major rotation lengths: weekly or seasonally. There are other options, but they aren't as common.
This rotating style of play is known as Prosperity style. It was the first major challenge to require players to rotate between families in a neighborhood. It's not as common of a challenge as it used to be at the end of Sims 2's days. The Build a City Challenge is the current major challenge that uses rotations between families in a neighborhood.
Some things to consider for how long your rotations are:
How well do you want to keep ages in sync if you send kids off to college?
How long is your typical play session?
When moving new families into the neighborhood or moving a Sim to a new home is it more important to be on the same season or the same day of the week? This assumes you do not have a mod to change the length of seasons.
I personally do seasonal rotations. I don't mind the days of the week being off. I don't mind the ages getting a little off due to college. I can typically play more than one house per day on this rotation. And I will notice it being a new season a lot more than a new week.
I tried being strict like every 3 ish days but I just play til I get bored and wanna switch. They're all played the same give or a take a couple. But it does keep things interesting
Sometimes... sometimes I kill them if I don't wanna play them.
And sometimes I make some Sims I like but don't want to play yet- Townies. They get to live until I have a Sim that's just right for them and I get to see them around the neighborhood.
Sometimes I leave kids in Uni until the next generation goes and I cheat them out- to die, play, or become townies.
I play each family for 1 sim-day. I'm considering lengthening it up a bit though. I used to play them for a sim-week. Think I might change it to something in between
Dissatisfied with Sims 4 and hoping for a better Sims 5
I play each household for 3 sim days (sometimes a bit longer if I'm not paying attention). I play 5 households, then play my University dorm for 3 days, then play another 5 households and so on (87 households all up).
I only play one 9 bedroom university dorm and hardly ever have it totally full of my sims, because not all get to go to Uni (a dice roll decides that). I find playing the University in this way better for me as sometimes it can get a little boring.
It depends. I usually just focus on one household until I feel done with them for the time being. If I have a story going, I rotate to align with that.
I'm terrible at rotation I always get so engrossed in one family I forget to switch! When I realise I feel that it's such a drag to switch out and age the rest of the hood (don't want junior reaching elderhood before senior!). That being said as much as I liked SP in other versions of the game I really enjoy having full control over each of my simmies fate.
I normally rotate according to ages. Like, if I had a sim give birth at roughly the same time as another, when one ages in a household, I start the rotation to keep up with the age timeline.
There really is no set rule that I follow.
I'm on a strict weekly rotation - Sunday 12am to Sunday 12am. I am weirdly obsessive about spreading time out equally among each household. Plus I find that if I stop myself from playing a particular house for too long, I never get bored and I always have something to look forward to doing when I come back to it.
I rotate by season. Whenever the season changes regardless of what time of day it is or what day it is i switch. When it comes down to University I play each household a whole college year (so 2 semesters each household). Since each season is 5 days in my game it gets me to accomplish things I want in a reasonable amount of time without getting bored and gives me something to look forward to when I come back and keeps the aging for everyone in sync.
I have experiment houses and then flats for when they finally get out of the houses. I rotate the experiment houses, switching when I get bored or until I've only got one Sim left. Then I switch to more family style playing in the flat until the kids are old enough to go in the experiment house. *sigh* I really hope my sims save data can be saved. I have so many huge family trees. I'm going to give Sims4 a try but I know my heart belongs to Sims2 and I'll be back :)
I used to rotate each family for 3 days, but then I always got to the families that I wanted to play for more than 3 days or the families I didn't want to play at all lol. So now I just play whichever family I want until I feel satisfied haha, keeping it too organized was driving me nuts!
When I played TS2 religiously, I rotated every sim week. I'm downloading the UC right now in fact, so I will be starting this play style up again shortly. XD
When I played TS2 religiously, I rotated every sim week. I'm downloading the UC right now in fact, so I will be starting this play style up again shortly. XD
Have you kept any of your old saves? I couldn't ever delete mine because of the years of hard work I put into it, and I knew that I would get my game working again eventually (thank you UC). It's so great to play my old families again.
Before The Sims 2 Seasons, I rotated Monday-Thursday, then Friday-Sunday. When The Sims 2 Seasons came around, I rotated after each season, which I believe was 5 days.
When I played TS2 (before the computer I played it on died) I would rotate whenever I got bored of the family I was playing so I'd switch to a new one. Or if I was playing a generation family I would rotate between the kids I sent to college and the family back at the home lot.
When I played TS2 religiously, I rotated every sim week. I'm downloading the UC right now in fact, so I will be starting this play style up again shortly. XD
Have you kept any of your old saves? I couldn't ever delete mine because of the years of hard work I put into it, and I knew that I would get my game working again eventually (thank you UC). It's so great to play my old families again.
Sadly, I do not have them. That was about 4 or 5 years ago. I was playing in Pleasantview. Lilith was with the Dreamer boy, Angela was with Dustin, and I had plans for Lucy Burb and Alexander Goth to get together. Dina married Mortimer and had a daughter with him before he died, and Nina was a single mom with a daughter. It was super fun. I'm going to recreate all that with my UC. I can't wait. But first I'm playing my simself for a while. She's currently a senior at college. :P
Comments
I usually have each family do something unique - like one family is a bunch of evil witches/warlocks, the other one own a business.. etc and so on.
This rotating style of play is known as Prosperity style. It was the first major challenge to require players to rotate between families in a neighborhood. It's not as common of a challenge as it used to be at the end of Sims 2's days. The Build a City Challenge is the current major challenge that uses rotations between families in a neighborhood.
Some things to consider for how long your rotations are:
I personally do seasonal rotations. I don't mind the days of the week being off. I don't mind the ages getting a little off due to college. I can typically play more than one house per day on this rotation. And I will notice it being a new season a lot more than a new week.
And sometimes I make some Sims I like but don't want to play yet- Townies. They get to live until I have a Sim that's just right for them and I get to see them around the neighborhood.
Sometimes I leave kids in Uni until the next generation goes and I cheat them out- to die, play, or become townies.
I only play one 9 bedroom university dorm and hardly ever have it totally full of my sims, because not all get to go to Uni (a dice roll decides that). I find playing the University in this way better for me as sometimes it can get a little boring.
Sims 2 Pleasant view story: http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/835656/a-not-so-pleasantview-story#latest
Edited: typo caused by my phones auto correct!
There really is no set rule that I follow.
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Have you kept any of your old saves? I couldn't ever delete mine because of the years of hard work I put into it, and I knew that I would get my game working again eventually (thank you UC). It's so great to play my old families again.
If I'm just bouncing between stories I play until I get bored.
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Sadly, I do not have them. That was about 4 or 5 years ago. I was playing in Pleasantview. Lilith was with the Dreamer boy, Angela was with Dustin, and I had plans for Lucy Burb and Alexander Goth to get together. Dina married Mortimer and had a daughter with him before he died, and Nina was a single mom with a daughter. It was super fun. I'm going to recreate all that with my UC. I can't wait. But first I'm playing my simself for a while. She's currently a senior at college. :P